Journey to Recovery from Childhood Abuse

Losses After Child Abuse That Aren’t Talked About

I spend a good part of last week doing some heavy housecleaning. I “reclaimed” our pantry (again) after hub hogged the pantry for his vending machine business for a few years. He sold the machines early last year and never cleaned his s@#$ out. I finally set aside several hours to throw out all of the junk in there, and I am thrilled to be able to use the pantry again. Hooray!

As I cleaned the pantry, I thought about how nobody ever taught me how to clean a house. My mother/abuser was mentally ill and never really cleaned our house when I was a kid. I did not know that a toilet ever needed to be scrubbed. I thought that floors only needed to be mopped once a year before out-of-town relatives came to visit. That was my existence throughout my childhood, and nobody ever told me anything differently. I finally learned how to clean a house by reading the book Housekeeping Secrets My Mother Never Taught Me. I followed this book like my own personal “Bible” and … voila … I now know how to clean a house (not that I enjoy it, but at least I can do it!).

When talking with people about the aftereffects of my childhood, we generally focus upon the post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms like flashbacks, insomnia, self-injury, and binge eating. Compared to those very serious aftereffects, not knowing how to clean a house falls low on the priority list. However, never learning a basic life skill like how to clean a house is another loss that I experienced. Those losses matter, too.

I am sure that all of us could provide a long laundry list of skills that we never acquired in our childhoods. For example, I never learned that, when you are invited to a party or other type of gathering at someone’s house, it is polite to ask, “What can I bring?” I learned that from a fellow child abuse survivor after I was humiliated after showing up at a barbeque at someone’s house with nothing in tow. It was a very large gathering (easily over 20 families invited), and mine was the only family that brought along nothing. I was so upset that I swore I would decline all further invitations for the rest of my life. My pals over at Isurvive talked me through the experience and helped me to realize that I was not a horrible person for not just knowing this stuff. This was another loss that I experienced thanks to my terrible upbringing.

Thanks to our atypical childhoods, all of us have experienced losses that don’t seem to get discussed. I just want validate that those losses matter, too, and they are just as deserving of being grieved.

Photo credit: Lynda Bernhardt

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13 Responses

Just so you know I clean my house with a leaf blower. I have a industrial fan that I set in the window and then use the leaf blower to blow the dust out. Then I bale up the dust bunnies to spin them and make long underwear. OK I made the bit about the dust bunnies and long underwear up. The leaf blower thing is true.

I once when off on an “educator” who said that they have a term for when a child is being abused. They call it “unavailable for learning” I said “They are available for learning they are learning how it survive in a way that you can not ever understand.

I am learning things I should have as a child. As best I can I go with it is exciting to learn and that I get to do it all my way.

Much of it is doing it for myself. I never balanced a check book and yet ran multimillion dollar jobs.

I had a problem with most therapy as they would work on things that I had not learned. Very hard to be thrilled about something as simple as cleaning house when I had accomplished so much as a child. I had a real hard time with that the older ones could never match what the younger ones accomplished. I figured out the younger ones could care less and then it was OK.

I’m very fortunate that my Therapist still lets me call her about “mommy advice.” She’s the mother of three wonderful children. Sometimes I just need to run a situation by her and get some help. Because I didn’t learn that as a child. We all need people like that.

Hmmm… Let’s see, balancing check book, laundry and cooking were the biggies I didn’t learn…. and don’t get me started on mortgages or taxes… all that grown up stuff!

Cleaning is great therapy Faith! Even when it’s a pain, I always find that I get into some different state of mind when I clean… maybe that’s where the saying came from “Cleanliness is next to Godliness” Only it’s not about the cleanliness, it’s about the process of cleaning! Well, that’s my interpretation anyway.

I am glad this was posted. It’s the mundane things that everyone takes for granted. I never learned to do laundry. I survived by watching everything and everyone around me, including the mother who ignored me. I watched her clean a house, I watch her buy groceries but she always did laundry when I was at school. A friend had to teach me when I was 18 and on my own. I didn’t even know how to turn on the washing machine!

Three of the most embarrassing things, tho, are that because I am so different from the rest of my family AND I was ignored, my mother never noticed that I have very dry skin and very dry, somewhat curly hair. Until I left home, I didn’t know there was conditioner for hair, skin lotion to make me feel better, and chapsticks and lip balms. OMG the lip balms have been a life saver. I grew up on a farm and I was not taken to town very often. (I guess that’s obvious). I occasionally saw all that stuff but Mom told me it was for rich people. I believed her. I didn’t question it, or even really know what the stuff was for.

I never learned to play or have fun, even what looked like play was very serious to me. Recently, I was helping a young woman who is walking through her own recovery process, but is in many ways freer that I am. She asked how she could support me (I am much older and she sounded doubtful she could help). I said I never learned how to play and she laughed and so did I, that we both had something to give each other.

Lots of cleaning skills were lost. But the other thing that I am just starting to grieve is I never learned how to do “girl” things, I’ve always felt totally inept and “feminine” skills, even as simple as shaving my legs. Always kind of felt like a gorilla when in feminine settings. Still do, actually, though I put on a pretty good show of being a woman.

I like what you said, Faith, that it’s ok to not know these things, and it’s okay to see them as losses. Also, I’m finding it’s ok to laugh with trustworthy friends (3 people) at what I don’t know is normal. And learn from them.

Cooking is another biggie for me, as well as the other stuff mentioned. Luckily I learned some basics through home economics classes, which I hated. The teacher was too much like my mother, and loved to emotionally abuse students selectively. She lurked. I have learned a lot of beginner skills by going to the children’s section in the library and looking for beginner books on topics I know nothing about. Anyway you are right, these losses are just as real and need to be grieved and healing from and hopefully we all can manage to overcome our deficits in these areas. Good and healing thoughts to us all.

i dont know anything, i feel like. I have just been fighting and struggling, and its been really hard lately. Life skills not so good, i just got in huge trouble for getting in a “confrontation situation” with someone. I really didnt see the problem or why it was such an issue, I needed something and I said it. finally said it. instead of having them walk all over me. didnt realize, no one ever told me not to do this. now its a big problem. 😦

hmmm never had a problem with the household stuff as my granny and my mother were there to show me that one. The feminine thing really made thought. Am nearly 40 and for the first time in my life i get a stylish kind of haircut. Shaving legs? What??? Make up? Never heard of it. That seems to be just a bit but all those bits add up so much and that makes them big losses. I never thought about grieving them.

My family were perfectionists about cleaning.. and there were physical concequences if there were crumbs left on the table or a dribble of sauce left on the bottle… so now I need to learn to be more relaxed about that stuff. I now pay someone to clean the house every two weeks cause it just avoids all of the stress that cleaning causes.

But in terms of skills we missed out on I am most worried about not knowing how to be a parent now.

I know what not to do – but that is a heck of a lot different than knowing what TO do.

Anybody else really like flylady.net for some of this stuff? I cried listening to one of her podcasts the other day, because she has such a gift at motherly mentoring, and it feeds my soul, besides really helping me practically.

Aside from that…yeah…this post really resonates with me. I feel like I missed a lot of learning how to be normal, and it is embarrassing. I also had a lot of shame around doing “girl stuff” as a teen, and that has stuck with me. Even though I’ve learned a lot…I wonder if I’ll ever feel normal.

[…] dealing with triggers, getting triggered I got triggered at a Halloween party over the week. As I have shared before, I do not go to parties very often because I inadvertently commit some sort of faux pas that makes […]

I had never bought anything like deodorant, didn’t know how to shop or bills,cook, my ex had to show me how to dust, learned how to set a table from tv, just like up there no make up shaving, menstral accidents
Growing up alone with no idea what touch or love was, just keep quiet and keep the peace.
thank you for this blog.